The present invention relates to a food product casing and a food product therewith, and also to methods of producing the same.
Food products such as ham, sausage, etc. wrapped in casing material are well known.
Fibrous casing and cellulose casings are generally used for wrapping the above mentioned meat products, such as a ham, a sausage, etc. Such casings provide good manufacturability of a product during smoking due to their breathability which is substantially different from the breathability of other synthetic film casings. The casing having the above specified characteristics are produced by coating or filming and impregnating with viscose. However, for impregnating with viscose some troublesome procedures are required such as regeneration, rinsing, neutralization by desulphurization, flexibility adding treatments, etc. In practice, the acid, alkali, rinsing and flexibility adding treatments during processing of meat remarkably decrease the productivity.
Furthermore, there is another problem in generation of hydrogen sulfide, carbon disulfide, etc. Since regenerated cellulose adheres to the surface of the meat product, peeling treatment must be applied for easy separation of the casing from the meat. In addition, the casing sheet must be mechanically extended while it is dry so as to follow both temperature changes in its boiling and smoking. Otherwise, the casing surface of the meat product would wrinkle and spoil the product value.
On the other hand, various edible films impregnated with polysaccharide such as vegetable gelatine, alkynecarboxylic acid, carrageenan in conventional methods are widely known. However, it is not known to apply polysaccharide of this type to the casings for hams, sausages, and the like.